Beautiful provincial towns are Italy’s true treasure. Almost every country in Europe has one or two Grade 1 tourist attractions, but only Italy can tempt visitors with a seemingly endless list of Grade B sites, all of which merit a long weekend if not, perhaps, a full-length holiday. Vicenza is another of these hidden gems…
Here is a warning: If you cannot stand the sight of water … … and if you are particularly allergic against streams that are narrowly framed by rows of ancient buildings … … you should stay well clear of Treviso because, once you are there, you will find no way of escaping your nightmare. You…
Long urban and country walks are great but they do take up a lot of time: time to organize and to prepare, time to travel, time to do the actual walking. Such walks can easily become projects around which you have to structure not only the day itself but your entire weekend break, squeezing other…
The Altes Land, a few kilometres outside of Hamburg, is Europe’s largest fruit orchard. More than 10 million cherry and apple trees are growing here on the southern bank of the Elbe river, inviting you to stroll through a sea of colour and scenic beauty. That was what we had in mind when we boarded…
St Pauli is the oldest of Hamburg’s Szeneviertels, although you would not have called it a “trendy neighbourhood” when people began to settle here in the late Middle Ages. St Pauli started its life as Hamburg’s messy attic: everything that the municipal administration did not want inside the city walls but, for various reasons, did…
If you travel a lot in Europe, there is a good chance that you will, sooner or later, pass through EuroAirport. This airport – which is located near prime hiking areas such as Lake Constance and the Black Forest and used a lot by low-cost airlines including Wizz and Easyjet – is the only airport…
Bordeaux in the sunny southwest of France is the unofficial wine capital of the world. The label of “Bordeaux”, however, under which the locally produced wines are distributed across the world and which has earned the city its fame, only serves to indicate the name of the place where these wines have been stored, blended…
At first glance, the small lakeside town of Orta – located roughly 70 km north of Milan at the foot of the Italian Alps – comes across as a typical Instagram town: beautiful … … but perhaps a little too confident in the expectation that her many admirers will be so dazzled by her looks…
The Easy Hikers have been going on country hikes and urban walks in roughly even proportions for well over 10 years now, and I still cannot decide which of the two I would go for if I could pick only one. Simply stated, the problem is this: a good country hike beats a good urban…
For many years, Lecce was the only major tourist destination in the entire mezzogiorno, the bottom of the Italian boot south of Naples. The town likes to style itself as the “Florence of the South” and can bolster this claim with some great architecture from different periods … … but particularly with its richly decorated…